The All-Or-Nothing Trap

Lately I've been really mindful about my thoughts.

And, in being mindful, I've found lots of unwelcome thoughts cluttering my mind and wreaking havoc on my success.

I recently began doing 20 minute high intensity interval training(HIIT) from The FIRM.

After I had just finished one of them I was feeling pretty good about myself and thought "Wow!  In 20 minutes I got a good workout!  Twenty minutes is very doable.  I could always find time for that.  I should start doing these everyday.  That's what I'll do!  I'll do these everyday!"

Very shortly after this little mental conversation I heard another voice in my head telling me there was no way I was ever going to be able to do this EVERY SINGLE DAY.

"Something always happens to derail me.  This will be just another thing I fail at.  I don't know why I even try.  I should just give it up."

But then I made another choice.  I decided to give myself permission to NOT do it everyday and to have that be good enough.

The reality is that it's extremely unlikely that I will be able to do ANYTHING every single day for the rest of my life!

That's crazy!  And, I think there's part of me that knows this.  But holding myself to unrealistic standards sets me up to fail and for a negative self fulfilling prophecy.

So instead I said to myself "I would really like to do these workouts.  I may not do them everyday and that's okay.  But I would like to try to do them most days, whenever it is feasible.  That's my intention.  That's the intention I'm setting for myself.  I want to do this for myself and however much I do or don't get done it will still be okay and I'll be okay because it will always be better than doing nothing at all".

It works for food too.

Too often we gain or maybe we're not losing the way we want to lose and so we get serious and pull out our inner dictator and say "Okay!  That's IT!  Play time is over!  It's time to get to work!  No more Mr. Nice Guy.  From now on you're gonna start tracking EVERYTHING FOREVER and you're not going to eat junk food or overeat or eat in the evening or ever go over your points or splurge at holidays or engage in emotional eating...."

It goes on and on and on but you get the idea.

Why do we do these crazy things to ourselves?

I think the minute we say these kinds of things to ourselves there's a part of us that says "No way!  That's never going to happen and you know it!  You're going to fail!"

So again, I'm saying today-

This is the intention I'm setting for myself.  I would like to be more consistent.  I would like to honestly track most of the time or whenever I think of it.  I would like to choose foods that nourish my body.  I would like to feel my clothes fitting more loosely.

I've even had sabotaging thoughts about the holiday snowball that is now upon us.

"I'll never lose weight now.  It's the holidays.  It's impossible.  My weight is already up and I'll probably just gain even more weight now and be right back to where I started from.  I can't believe I did this!  Why do I let myself get this bad?!  Oh I'm so depressed!!!"

And now I'm saying that I'm not going to think too much about tomorrow or the next day or the next or the next holiday.

I'm only going to focus on what I can do RIGHT NOW in this moment on this day.

I'm going to try to make good choices today and to love myself through every choice, no matter how I feel about them.

Ultimately that's the best I can do and that's realistic.

And, I'm going to keep getting back up with the hope and joy in my heart of knowing I'm never too far gone and, no matter how today goes down, tomorrow is a new day and I can always start over.